A corporate financial meltdown that put North Pacific Group Inc. in receivership will extend to south-central Missouri, according to employees of the Portland, Ore.-based company that has one facility in Texas County.
The North Pacific Group Inc., Oregon’s third-largest private company, has been taken over by a court-appointed receiver after what appears to be at least three failed attempts to sell the company.
U.S. District Court Judge Anna J. Brown last Wednesday appointed Edward Hostmann Inc., a Lake Oswego-based financial advisory and crisis management firm, to take control of the company.
Employees at North Pacific’s Raymondville manufacturing plant on North Highway 137 will lose their job. It is believed to affect about 20. A call by the Herald to that location was referred to Portland, where attempts to receive comment were unsuccessful. According to the company’s Web site, the company also has operations in West Plains, Mountain View, Springfield and Van Buren. Those locations also are expected to be affected by the company’s financial troubles.
The Portland Business Journal reported the move was requested by a consortium of lenders led by Wells Fargo Capital Finance Inc., which filed a lawsuit last Wednesday against North Pacific and its subsidiaries, Nor Pac Enterprises Inc., RTH Lumber Co., and Burns Holdings Inc.
The lenders claim North Pacific, a distributor of building materials and wood products that once had $1.2 billion in annual revenue, was in default on its loans.
North Pacific and its subsidiaries owe about $42 million on what was originally a $160 million credit agreement signed three years ago. North Pacific eventually put its assets up as collateral to meet credit agreements, according to court documents.
The privately held Portland-based wood products company reached $1.2 billion in revenue in 2006, a figure that began to fall along with the nation’s home building industry.
By 2008, the company’s sales had fallen to $995 million, though it still ranked as Oregon’s third-largest private company by revenue. It employed 626 worldwide and 200 in Portland as of 2008, according to the Business Journal’s Book of Lists.